DC Universe Online

It’s the middle of GDC, and I won’t have time to be playing many games aside from Pokemon Black/White. But in the meantime, I’ve been trying out a few games. Here’s what I’ve been playing the past week.

And Honey Badger pretty much acted that way as I button-mashed my way through quest after quest. DCUO works well on a console, playing almost like a hack-and-slasher. The one big difference is that the world is persistent and you’ll be seeing fellow superheroes fighting crime and helping each other out.

What I liked about DCUO’s quest system is that it’s all broken up into tiny manageable parts, so that I felt like I was accomplishing something even if I was playing a short while. I also liked how the quests all folded into one another. It’s almost like playing through a story arc in a comic book series, where everything culminates in a nice boss fight.

I did run into a few problems though. Parts of the world are unstable and if you enter one of those rough spots, the game slows down to a hiccup and becomes unplayable at times. I’m hoping that Sony fixes all this because I still have a few more months to try this game out.

Pokemon SoulSilver— It’s strange, but I’m playing this game religiously. It started out as a way to kill time on vacation, but over time, I’ve caught the Pokemon bug, and it’s become my go-to game when I have nothing on my plate. Overall, I’ve logged in an additional 40 hours into the game, and I captured the Lugia, one of the legendary Pokemons. It’s the one on the cover. I know the graphics are dated and the gameplay isn’t that complex, but I’ve become enthralled with the world. It’ll be hard to pull away, but I think there’s something on the horizon that will pique my interest.

Knights Contract— This hack-and-slasher showed up in my mailbox and I was puzzled because I’ve never heard of it. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, and when I put it in the system, I came away disappointed. If you’re going to make a God of War-type game nowadays, the bar is set high. If it isn’t visually striking immediately, I won’t play it. I’m sorry, but there are too many games out there and if it doesn’t catch my eye within the first 30 minutes, then it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the game. The one thing that I did like about Knights Contract is the character design, which is very Japanese and eye-catching. Combine that with a medieval time period and it’s something I may stick around for.